Before I start, I should declare a potential conflict of interest: Tony Whitmore is my other half, and has been for the past 12+ years.

That doesn’t mean I blindly think he’s great at everything even when he isn’t. He has his faults. And he does daft things at times, like occasionally forgetting to press Record when we do an Ubuntu-UK Podcast show; though even then, he’s usually planned for such an eventuality (he has a backup recording of the stream running on his VPS).

He’s quite good at planning.

The first time I met his family, his brother Mark joked that we probably had a written schedule for meeting their grandparents and other family members. Mark was wrong. It wasn’t a joke. We actually did. Tony’s Sunday roast dinners used to get their own Gantt chart.

The brilliant fun that is OggCamp probably wouldn’t have come about without Tony’s planning ability. As fellow UUPC-founder Alan Pope says “the podcast would almost certainly not exist” either. That’s not to say that Tony has done either of those things alone. Alan, who came up with the original idea for UUPC, is probably the creative genius of the project – coming up with a lot of the content ideas over the past 4 years and typically thinking up wacky ideas on his 50 mile drive to our house to record the show. OggCamp’s organising team is pretty big and varies from year to year but Tony’s hand is usually firmly on the budget, making sure we break even (for which I’m sure we’re all grateful as the event is financially underwritten by the individuals on the two podcast teams).

Alan, and all the HantsLUG guys we’ve known since moving to Hampshire, would probably agree that Tony’s planning and his lists are pretty epic but it generally gets things done (except when trying to get his phone to work at FOSDEM).

I think the thing that impresses me most, though, is that once he’s decided to do something, he gets on and does it to his best ability and that thing is pretty much always a success. Things like:

 

• Installing an all-new Dolby Digital EX sound system at Lancaster University FilmSoc (including wiring up the new rear speakers and reorganising the projection box so all the new kit would fit). The engineers were astounded, when they arrived, to find that the physical installation was complete and they were mostly just needed to calibrate it.
• Teaching himself Linux well enough that, for a long time, his website howto was the first hit whenever you searched for Core Linux, and he quickly settled in to HantsLUG as one of the people you went to for help with your Linux installation.
• Producing the Ubuntu-UK Podcast (which has had over 1.5 million downloads since it started in 2008), honing his audio production skills (and buying lots of new toys).
• Devising and producing the amazing documentary that is Don’t Listen Alone. I just love it!

His latest project is too young yet to judge its overall success but I have faith because he has form. Last month, he set up Tony Whitmore Weddings, his new wedding photography business. He’s always enjoyed photography, crafting photos with technical precision and artistic flare. Inspired by our friend James Hodgson‘s Christmas present to us, Tony decided to set himself a photo project a couple of years ago where he had to take enough photos in 12 months that he could produce a calender to give as Christmas presents the following year. On the back of that calender, he got his first wedding photographer gig.

As usual, he practised and did a lot of research, including watching tutorials by the awesome Jasmine Star. Jasmine’s focus is only partly on the photography; she talks a lot about the business side of being a wedding photographer. And at the start of this year, Tony decided he was going to give it a go. He went on Jasmine’s course when she came to London in July, and he attended a few of the free courses offered by the HMRC.

Last weekend, he launched his business website (with logo kindly donated by my new cousin Jeff and his funky graphic design skills) and Facebook page, and he already has not only a reasonable portfolio but also bookings for future weddings.

I think he’s amazing – but then I would. I don’t think I’m alone, though, in having a huge amount of admiration for what he achieves when he sets his mind to something.

Roger Light (@ralight) has just posted on his blog that Facebook are using MQTT for their new messaging system and, specifically, they seem to be using some part of Roger’s Mosquitto project in it.

So why is this a big deal to me?

Last weekend was the third OggCamp conference, OggCamp 11, at the Farnham Maltings in Surrey. Two years ago, at the first OggCamp (a one-day event at the Connaught Hotel in Wolverhampton), we invited Andy Stanford-Clark (@andysc) to be our opening keynote speaker. Andy co-invented the MQTT messaging protocol about 10 years earlier and, while there was a server implementation of MQTT (Really Small Message Broker; RSMB) that you could download for free from IBM’s website, it was proprietary and there was no open source implementation available.

Andy wrote a new presentation, especially for OggCamp, describing the geeky innards of his Twittering house (as seen earlier that year on the BBC). The presentation was a fantastic kickstart to the day and (somewhat predictably for a conference with its foundations firmly in the open source world) Andy was questioned about what bits of his home automation system were built on open source software and open standards. The one significant part of the system that was proprietary was RSMB (the core part that enabled all the parts of his house to communicate).

Then OggCamp started, we had a good time, and we went home exhausted but happy.

And then, just two weeks later, Roger announced that he’d registered a new project called Mosquitto (as in MosQuiTTo) on Launchpad. He’d been inspired by Andy’s talk at OggCamp to write an open source alternative to RSMB. Within what seemed like days he had a working bit of code which was taken up and tested by others in the open source community and hardware-hacking communities like Homecamp.

I cannot claim any credit at all for all the hard work that Roger and others put in developing and testing Mosquitto. I’ve always been proud, though, that Mosquitto was born at OggCamp – we played our small part in helping connect the previously mostly corporate/business MQTT with the open source communities.

That Facebook announced they were adopting MQTT for their new messaging system the day before OggCamp 11 meant we could vicariously revel in Roger’s glory while we tried to find out just whether Facebook had adopted his code or their own implementation. The answer seems to be somewhere between the two.

And while I’m proud for OggCamp (of course), I’m also excited for Roger in his own right that his name is now in the licence agreement of apps from the mighty Facebook – that kind of recognition for your hard work must be such an amazing feeling!

It’s just one short week until OggCamp 11! Each year we’ve done this event, it’s grown. This year has a really special feeling about it.

It’s brilliant that there are people who have taken the event name literally and are camping for the weekend. Hopefully the weather will favour them! The Farnham Maltings venue has a really nice feel to it and is ideally located for the park and pubs. The attendees at OggCamp really make the event what it is and the best bit (well, one of them) as an organiser is seeing everyone arriving at the venue on Saturday morning!

We’ve got three stages, two of which are being run as an unconference. That means that the wonderful OggCampers volunteer talks and others vote for the ones they’d like to see most! We’ve had some really great talks submitted this way in the past. It sounds a bit chaotic and it is, but it works! We’ll be using CampFire Manager by Jon Spriggs to schedule these talks for the first time this year so you’ll be able to propose and vote for talks by txt msg and see the schedule up on the digital displays around the venue.

Our main stage schedule is basically complete. The Ubuntu Podcast team will be joining forces with the Linux Outlaws for the traditional live podcast recording. There will be a panel discussion and a raffle (of course) too! Our wonderful main stage speakers include:

• Simon Phipps
• LornaJane Mitchell (careers in Open Source)
• Chris Gutteridge (Southampton OpenData project)
• Steve Lee (Accessibility)
• Wayne Myers (professional music production on Linux)

We’ve got some exhibitors, including

• O’Reilly (who are offering 40% off their books on the Saturday)
• Free Software Foundation Europe
• Hacker Public Radio
• Ubuntu UK
• Reprap 3D printer

We’ve also got some surprises planned for the weekend which you’ll only find out about by being there. If you want to come along and join in some or all of the weekend’s activities, you can. It’s free. That’s right, it doesn’t cost a penny. There are a few tickets left and you can get your hands on them here: http://oggcamp11.eventbrite.com

It’s free thanks to our lovely sponsors:

• Bytemark (our headline sponsor!)
• Google
• Chris Procter on behalf of lug.org.uk
• Bitfolk (sponsoring the Saturday night party!)

This week is always the quickest of the whole process. Before we know it we’ll be standing in the William Cobbett pub sharing a drink or two with the lovely OggCampers on Friday night and won’t touch the ground until after the Sunday night drinks! The plan for the weekend (and lots more information) is available on the OggCamp website.

One of the best parts of the weekend is meeting people who listen to the show, so please say hello! See you there!

Well, we’re just two weeks away from OggCamp10. It’s all happening in Liverpool on May Bank Holiday weekend. And it’s all looking very exciting!

I went to visit OggCamp10 venue The Black-e this afternoon with Dan and it’s really cool! It’s right in the centre of Liverpool and right next to the massive and brightly coloured Chinatown arch, the entrance to the oldest Chinatown in Europe. The Main Stage is a lovely big room on the upstairs, Stage 2 and 3 are in the basement, and the exhibition/chillout area is on the ground floor by the entrance. We’re planning to have conference wifi too, supplied by one of our sponsors, The Linux Emporium.

After spending longer than planned roaming The Black-e and trying to imagine it filled with people, we walked 5 minutes down the way to Studio 2, the bar for Saturday night. Studio 2 is the “studio where Coldplay, Barry Manilow, Take That, Spice Girls & Diana Ross recorded” but is now converted into a rather unique-looking bar with food. The building is still a proper recording studio though and, in Studio 2, the padded doors remain, as does the glass window between rooms, and separate recording booths. The bar will be available from 6pm until 2am and the chef will stay on in the early part of the evening so that we can buy food there.

And finally, there’s Liverpool itself. I’ve had various slightly doubtful enquiries about whether it’s worth going to Liverpool (especially if it’s quite a way to travel). I’ve been to Liverpool a few times in my life and I think it’s a really cool city nowadays.

As the 2008 City of Culture, Liverpool has been much regenerated over the past few years and is a really interesting place to be. Lots to see as a visitor, like the big wheel down by the docks, Albert Docks themselves, the Merseyside Maritime Museum, food at the old Bluecoat School…

…and not forgetting the rather random SuperLambBanana, an “unusual artwork [that] was created to warn of the dangers of genetically modified food, whilst being appropriate to the city of Liverpool due to the port’s rich history in the trade of lambs and the import of bananas”,  and the 125 mini SLBs that have been sponsored by local (and not-so-local) businesses and are mostly located around the city just waiting to be found–including near the OggCamp10 venue:

And of course there’s loads of good food (including good Chinese restaurants right by the venue), lots of shopping down the road, and, if today’s anything to go by, lots of sunshine too.

p.s. Thanks to Dan Lynch for the first photo, and to my Mum for the last three.

Ada Lovelace wrote the world’s first computer program in 1843. The computer on which the program would have run, Charles Babbage‘s Analytical Engine, was never built, though Babbage continued with his designs until his death and is remembered as the father of computers. The purpose of Ada Lovelace Day is to sing the achievements of women in technology and science – often their contributions go unnoticed.

On Ada Lovelace Day, today, anyone and everyone is encouraged to blog, podcast, videocast, tweet about the achievements of a woman in technology and science.

Laura Czajkowski

I met Laura Czajkowski last September when part of the Ubuntu UK Podcast team shipped off to Dublin to attend her OssBarCamp conference, have a weekend of geekery, and an evening of BBQ and cocktails. Since then, I’ve seen Laura working passionately to help kickstart the Ubuntu Women Project and I’m aware that she is also on the Ubuntu NGO project which looks at how to make it as easy as possible for charities, not-for-profits, and other NGOs to benefit from Ubuntu and Open Source Software.

After I tweeted a few weeks back that I was working on OggCamp10 planning stuff, she replied, offering her help. I wasn’t sure how serious she was but as we had a load of large tasks that needed doing around that time, I figured it was worth asking. Within a week, she was a fully signed-up member of the OggCamp planning team (ie she gets all the emails and can edit the wiki), despite having her own conference to organise as well. OMG Ubuntu published a great interview with her today.

Ana Nelson

Another ace woman I met in Dublin that weekend was Ana Nelson, who Laura had finally convinced to present about her documentation automation work. I swear (as a former technical writer), the stuff she develops on should be used by corporations everywhere to maintain their vast documentation libraries and to save their skillful writers from spending hours manually updating screenshots and code snippets. Her talk at OssBarCamp was fascinating and understated – she sat on a chair, speaking her way round a printed, illustrated mindmap, punctuating it all with physical props like wooden toys and knitting needles. Her tweets are no less insightful, witty, and slightly off-beat.

 

So they’re just two of the women in the Open Source world (in particular, the Irish Open Source world) who’ve inspired me recently. Go check out their blogs to find out more.